Sniper/Gunslinger Set Bonus Discussion

Set bonus 2 and 6 are fine unless there would be option to reduce 30 sec cooldown to 20 sec (on set bonus 2).
The set bonus 4 in the other hand is kinda not needed, especially the energy restore. Everyone who play Sniper/Gunslinger long enough is able to never go below 60% energy.
Would be much usefull if over here pop out a nice defensive cooldown, like in eg evasion would remove all negative buffs, or using evasion finishes cooldown of escape etc.

Set bonus 2 and 6 are fine unless there would be option to reduce 30 sec cooldown to 20 sec (on set bonus 2).
The set bonus 4 in the other hand is kinda not needed, especially the energy restore. Everyone who play Sniper/Gunslinger long enough is able to never go below 60% energy.
Would be much usefull if over here pop out a nice defensive cooldown, like in eg evasion would remove all negative buffs, or using evasion finishes cooldown of escape etc.

The 4-piece set bonus is definitely necessary for Virulence, and is not something I don't appreciate for Marksman. Sure, maybe this is mostly on parses where you are always going ham instead of bosses where there is some downtime to regen energy during, but still. I would say if you never have to worry about energy management on a Sniper/Gunslinger(in PvE) you are not playing as optimally as you could be.

I'd want something that makes virulence energy management easier, instead of having to put in fillers of basic attacks/rolls in the rotation it would be more convenient to have it do less damage overall but with the resources to fire off takedowns/quickdraws and dirty blasts/lethal shots regularly and without energy difficulties.
Making it easier to use, squeezing in more heavy duty fillers and not touching its dps will only result in the spec being op(you're gonna have to do both if you want to do 1 of the changes), that's what I think.

The evasion cleanse is something I'd want as well, don't know why that had to be removed in 3.0.

*rage*Tbh i don't see any reason asking the community about ideas/opinion if your intent is do give set-wearer max up to 5% DPS increase. If i just think about it, that's up to 200 DPS if you normally do 4k. Does this justify the effort and time spent to get this? Clearly - NO. You can simply remove the set-items from the game. Given the fact your raid-encounters are mostly gear (DPS) check it is clear for me, this dev. team has no idea what its supposed to do. Hail all those free comms *rage ended*

If i would design a set:
I'd stay with the 2p bonus giving you a theoretical 1% DPS buff. It is not much but it teaches you at least some priority in using certain ability to get the bonus and keep its max. up-time. I'd replace the abilities though - the bonus should be granted by Penetrating Blasts/Series of Shots (and the corresponding pub abilities)

4p bonus is based in some resource regen, it is clearly the right idea. The solution though.... is far away from perfect. Since all 3 specs use Corrosive Dart, i'd make Snipe/Lethal Shot causes your next Corrosive Dart tick restore 5 energy (10 if it is a crit). If you are afraid this would push Virulence straight to the heaven - increase energy cost of Cull.

6p should be unique. For MM is should grand you 10% armor penetration, for Virulence it should make your poison effect tick 10% faster and for Engineering it should convert all damage to Elemental.

Last but not least: You should really rethink the item budget. For me as non DoT-based DPS alacrity makes 0 sense. In order to gain significant benefit from it, i need to sacrifice so much primary and secondary stats, so at the end i have a net loss...And this brings me to the idea maybe 2p bonus should be like +5-10% alacrity bonus? (added to your current %) This might make alacrity viable for everyone.

First and foremost, the 6-piece Set Bonus is still not working correctly for Saboteur Gunslingers / Engineering Snipers. For Gunslingers, the first Sabotage Charge consumed with the first stack of Smuggler's Luck makes all following Contingency Charges crit. I would like to know if this is supposed to be intended for both Gunslingers and Snipers or not at all. It's not a game breaking thing if it's not removed/added, but further clarification here would be wonderful.

Regarding future changes to the Set Bonuses:

2 Piece: Fine where it is, there really is no Issue with it, however, it just takes a little bit of practice and timing to get max uptime with it in Dirty Fighting/Virulence.

4 Piece: I think this should be the only one that needs to be reworked. In PvP, the Energy added and Cooldown reduction rate is unnecessary. In PvE, it helps Saboteur/Engineering and Virulence / Dirty Fighting with their openers, and requires timing to put it to good use later on. The energy gain in Marksman is not very needed in PvE. I could see this go in two ways. 1) Keep following the DPS increase path, and add in the Old 4-piece in with the current bonus (decreases energy of Quickdraw / Takedown by 5) or 2) Take a defensive route, possibly reducing the cooldown of Hightail It and defensive screen by 4 or 5 seconds.
Edit: 3) Change the Illegal Mods buff to increase the duration of Illegal Mods by X seconds. Just tossing another idea here.
Edit 4) Wipe everything and make Flourish Shot / Shatter Shot useful again. "Activating Flourish Shot / Shatter Shot generates 1 extra energy per second over 15 seconds, and increases all damage dealt to the target by 10% for 6-10 seconds. Cannot occur more than once every 60 seconds.", though this should buff the damage done by Flourish Shot / Shatter Shot to about 85% of the damage dealt by Flurry of Bolts. This will grant a sort of DPS raid buff to Gunslingers / Snipers both in PvP and PvE without losing energy.

6 Piece: Besides what's already been discussed about Saboteur / Engineering, I'd say it's fine where it is. For Marksman / Sharpshooter, it provides amazing burst to the class both in most PvP and some PvE scenarios. If anything, MM/Sharp relies heavily on this utility. Sabo/Engi works the same way, although the Contingency Charges / Cluster Bombs need to be checked. I'd say the weakest point to it is in Dirty Fighting, simply because Wounding Shots / Cull is a channel, which means it can be broken. Aimed Shot / Ambush is a cast time, so timing is the only issue here, and Sabotage Charge is instant, so that explains itself. The damage dealt during the full 3 second cast by Wounding Shots / Cull itself (Not the extra DoT ticks) is about 12k in BiS PvE gear. (Used this parse as a reference), which is actually less than a typical Ambush / Aimed Shot. From a PvE perspective, this for Dirty Fighting / Virulence is fine, but since the setup for the critted Cull/Wounding Shots is so obvious, it sometimes won't get the full channel off, losing much more potential dps.
Overall here, it's got a slight disadvantage in Dirty Fighting/Virulence, but it's hard to incorperate a change here without affecting the other two specs negatively, so this should stay where it is. The only other option I'd consider is to open this up to Quickdraw / Takedown as well, but this would harm Sharpshooter in PvE under 30%, and the damage dealt by this ability is low in comparison to cull anyways.

Tl;DR : Keep 2 and 6, but look again at 4.

Edits:

Quote:
Originally Posted by BigBoppa

4p bonus is based in some resource regen, it is clearly the right idea. The solution though.... is far away from perfect. Since all 3 specs use Corrosive Dart, i'd make Snipe/Lethal Shot causes your next Corrosive Dart tick restore 5 energy (10 if it is a crit). If you are afraid this would push Virulence straight to the heaven - increase energy cost of Cull.
.

Saboteur / Engineering has very little use for Snipe / Charged Burst, so this won't happen. You have to keep all three disciplines in mind here.

"We have winnowed all futures. The cull endures. It is optimal. It is necessary." - Shiva

SWTOR goes F2P; 2014 PvP FAQ, A: "We have no plans at this time" (c)2014 cantina, A: "They’d love to do that at some point, but technically very challenging and unlikely to happen in the near future." (c)
2016 livestream: "RNG is exciting"

Any change to Quickdraw energy for Dirty Fighting should be in the Dirty Fighting discipline and not tied to a set bonus. Quickdraw energy is largely irrelevant in the other two specs. There is no need to replace a useful set bonus for two specs with one that is not useful, just to help one spec.

First and foremost, the 6-piece Set Bonus is still not working correctly for Saboteur Gunslingers / Engineering Snipers. For Gunslingers, the first Sabotage Charge consumed with the first stack of Smuggler's Luck makes all following Contingency Charges crit. I would like to know if this is supposed to be intended for both Gunslingers and Snipers or not at all. It's not a game breaking thing if it's not removed/added, but further clarification here would be wonderful.

Regarding future changes to the Set Bonuses:

2 Piece: Fine where it is, there really is no Issue with it, however, it just takes a little bit of practice and timing to get max uptime with it in Dirty Fighting/Virulence.

4 Piece: I think this should be the only one that needs to be reworked. In PvP, the Energy added and Cooldown reduction rate is unnecessary. In PvE, it helps Saboteur/Engineering and Virulence / Dirty Fighting with their openers, and requires timing to put it to good use later on. The energy gain in Marksman is not very needed in PvE. I could see this go in two ways. 1) Keep following the DPS increase path, and add in the Old 4-piece in with the current bonus (decreases energy of Quickdraw / Takedown by 5) or 2) Take a defensive route, possibly reducing the cooldown of Hightail It and defensive screen by 4 or 5 seconds.
Edit: 3) Change the Illegal Mods buff to increase the duration of Illegal Mods by X seconds. Just tossing another idea here.
Edit 4) Wipe everything and make Flourish Shot / Shatter Shot useful again. "Activating Flourish Shot / Shatter Shot generates 1 extra energy per second over 15 seconds, and increases all damage dealt to the target by 10% for 6-10 seconds. Cannot occur more than once every 60 seconds.", though this should buff the damage done by Flourish Shot / Shatter Shot to about 85% of the damage dealt by Flurry of Bolts. This will grant a sort of DPS raid buff to Gunslingers / Snipers both in PvP and PvE without losing energy.

6 Piece: Besides what's already been discussed about Saboteur / Engineering, I'd say it's fine where it is. For Marksman / Sharpshooter, it provides amazing burst to the class both in most PvP and some PvE scenarios. If anything, MM/Sharp relies heavily on this utility. Sabo/Engi works the same way, although the Contingency Charges / Cluster Bombs need to be checked. I'd say the weakest point to it is in Dirty Fighting, simply because Wounding Shots / Cull is a channel, which means it can be broken. Aimed Shot / Ambush is a cast time, so timing is the only issue here, and Sabotage Charge is instant, so that explains itself. The damage dealt during the full 3 second cast by Wounding Shots / Cull itself (Not the extra DoT ticks) is about 12k in BiS PvE gear. (Used this parse as a reference), which is actually less than a typical Ambush / Aimed Shot. From a PvE perspective, this for Dirty Fighting / Virulence is fine, but since the setup for the critted Cull/Wounding Shots is so obvious, it sometimes won't get the full channel off, losing much more potential dps.
Overall here, it's got a slight disadvantage in Dirty Fighting/Virulence, but it's hard to incorperate a change here without affecting the other two specs negatively, so this should stay where it is. The only other option I'd consider is to open this up to Quickdraw / Takedown as well, but this would harm Sharpshooter in PvE under 30%, and the damage dealt by this ability is low in comparison to cull anyways.

Tl;DR : Keep 2 and 6, but look again at 4.

Edits:

Saboteur / Engineering has very little use for Snipe / Charged Burst, so this won't happen. You have to keep all three disciplines in mind here.

All they have to do for Dirty Fighting is lower the cost on either Quickdraw or Dirty Blast without messing with the current 6 piece bonus. I'm still using the old 4 piece set bonus just for energy purposes.

I mainly play Marksmanship, and I've decent knowledge of Virulence. Won't be of much help about Engineering, though I briefly tried it for a week.

I believe the 6pc set-bonuses are just right. Marksmanship dummy parses aren't spectacular, but they aren't lackluster either, and the dependable burst from the 6pc set bonus keeps Marksmanship near-competitive* in PvP (and in some PvE where burst is important). The damage for a lased Cull is nice too, but Virulence suffers from more fundamental problems in PvP (while it is excellent for PvE). Same goes for Explosive Probe damage and Engineering, except Engineering is more viable in PvP than PvE I think.

The 2pc bonus is same across all classes - however I'd rather have it be activated by Penetrating Blasts/Series of Shots. It is possible to hold onto Ambush to preserve burst in some cases, but PB/SoS is too rotational to not use. This would ensure more uptime for the buff, for me at least.

The 4pc bonus is decent. It gives me some leeway in parses, but could use something more imaginitive. Energy reduction of Takedown would definitely go a longer way for all the specs.

* All sniper specs currently suffer from the offensive output not being worth the loss of defensive abilities - it is general consensus that they need to be balanced to reflect each other. Marksmanship makes it out better than the other two specs which are plainly not that great, as the offensive burst is dependable, and cannot be purged. But a story for another thread.

Quote:
Originally Posted by kvandertulip

Any change to Quickdraw energy for Dirty Fighting should be in the Dirty Fighting discipline and not tied to a set bonus. Quickdraw energy is largely irrelevant in the other two specs. There is no need to replace a useful set bonus for two specs with one that is not useful, just to help one spec.

It does have utility for Marksmanship though - in the Execute phase one should currently replace Corrosive Dart with Takedown, except to reapply the debuff.

I think the 6 set bonus is very good for Dirty Fighting/Lethality but it's very weak for Marks/Engineer. The reason is the cooldown on their signature abilities is so much longer. Might be better if the bonus was tied to something else, like series of shots/penetrating.

Increased survivability for the 4-piece would be better, too.

You couldn't put the 6 piece on penetrating blasts because you could just go: Laze Target > Penetrating Blasts (double relic procs somewhere in here)> Sniper Volly > Penetrating Blasts > and they would be in execute range for Takedown > Followthrough you could literally kill someone in pvp in 5 seconds from 35m away. In 4 seconds 2/3 of their health is gone and in the last 1 second they take a 9.5k execute and a 8k Followthrough.

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The statements and opinions expressed on these websites are solely those of their respective authors and do not necessarily reflect the views, nor are they endorsed by Bioware, LucasArts, and its licensors do not guarantee the accuracy of, and are in no way responsible for any content on these websites.